CBRN Terrorism: It is Real!

Col Ram Athavale, PhD is a freelance CBRN Security and Risk Mitigation Consultant based at Pune, India. He has been a Key Adviser to the Government of India (MoD and MHA) on CBRN Security. He has also been a Key CBRN Expert for the EU CBRN Risk Mitigation Centres of Excellence initiative in Eastern and Central Africa.

If we wait for the danger to become clear, it could be too late.

Joe Biden, USA

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the world hard. Global outcry on assigning blame to the origins has led to the emergence of many studies of related issues like bio-terrorism, apocalypse and strategic warfare. Globalization, growing industrialization and revolution in Information Technology have given rise to transnational terrorism or ‘Revolution in Terrorist Affairs (RTA)’. Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) materials have proliferated widely and the expertise required to utilize these is actually within the grasp of terrorists.

Terrorists may resort to the use of CBRN agents to generate widespread panic, which could bring down a democratic government, or to establish a position of strength from which to negotiate their demands. The Tokyo nerve gas attack by the Japanese cult group, Aum Shinrikyo, on 20 March 1995, had set a precedent in the use of WMD. The Anthrax cases in the US, the use of Mustard gas, Chlorine and Sarin in the Syrian conflict, and radiation scare across the EU are other examples. It is but a matter of time when India will be faced with a CBRN terrorist incident.

Emerging CBRN Threats

With the empowerment of citizens, rising aspirations and easy availability of dual-use technology, we are witnessing the emergence of the ‘techno’-terrorist, who may resort to CBRN Terrorism. Several incidents in 2017 and 2018 showed increasing use of sophisticated chemical agents to carry out assassinations or assassination attempts. In February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur airport with the nerve agent VX. On 4 March 2018, the Soviet era nerve agent Novichok was used in the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK. It is, therefore, not far-fetched to assume that CBRN threats loom large over India. It requires a frank and serious study about threats and their prevention, vulnerability assessment and how we are preparing to manage the consequences of such an incident in India. 

As a result of the programme for de-nuclearisation in the former states of the Soviet Union, there are about 500 metric tons of U-235 and 300 tons of Pu-239 from dismantled weapons that have to be disposed off. To add to it are the “Suitcase Bombs”, many of which are rumoured to be missing. A virtual ‘nuclear black market’ has come up in the Central Asian Republics (CAR) region. Technological partnerships may exist among rogue nations and groups with proliferation of weapons grade fissile material.

A radiological weapon, on the other hand, disperses radiological material by means of conventional explosions, causing radioactive contamination. Such weapons are called Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDD) or “Dirty Bombs”. These could be dispersible or just spreading radioactivity. The arrest of Dhiren Bharot for seeking to make a RDD in the UK, is an example. The deliberate use of radioactive isotopes to cause deaths (like the Litvenko Polonium poisoning case) or accidents (like the Mayapuri incident of Delhi, involving Cobalt-60), are wakeup calls for us, Indians. Cesium, Polonium and other radioactive isotopes are potential weapon ingredients.

Biological agents like toxins (Botulinum, Ricin) or live pathogens (anthrax, cholera, plague) are more potent than chemical agents, since they attack cells and multiply in their victims. Apart from high toxicity and delayed detectability by traditional sensors, these agents can be made from lab samples and stolen material. COVID-19, SARS and Ebola are live examples of the dangers of a viral spread. A number of laboratories in the world are working on such lethal pathogen samples and cultures of deadly biological agents with a view to develop vaccines and drugs.Terror groups are said to have set up lab facilities to work on such pathogens.

The availability of Chemical agents or their ingredients is widespread. They are easy to produce even in a home lab by trained chemists, especially in a country having a vast industrial base like India, China or even Pakistan. The availability of toxic dual-purpose Chemical like Chlorine, Phosgene Hydrogen Cyanide, and many other Toxic Industrial Chemicals (TICs), makes the task of Chemical terrorist easy.